Avi Buffalo: now with a whole lot more Sub Pop!

Introductions are in order…

Avi Buffalo is the adopted name of Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg, an 18 year-old singer/songwriter and guitarist from Long Beach , CA. Avi Buffalo is also the name of the band he formed with friends and like-minded collaborators Sheridan Riley (drums), Arin Fazio (bass) and Rebecca Coleman (keyboards and vocals). Though Avi started recording songs 3 years ago, during his sophomore year in high school, amidst the dissolution of his previous band Monogram, it wasn’t until Bill Cutts of Outsider Folk asked Avi to play a show in 2007 that Avi Buffalo the band came to be. This first show was an acoustic set at the Zephyr Café in Long Beach. Through the following summer and a local music festival that fall, the band became an altogether more electric thing. And soon they were asked to play shows in Los Angeles. They did and then kept on doing it. A year later Avi and Aaron Embry (who has played with folks like Elliott Smith, Daniel Lanois, Emmylou Harris, Beth Orton, and a whole slew of others) began recording the songs that will become the band’s first record. At the prompting of early fan and Sub Pop A&R Head Tony Kiewel, the band toured up to Seattle, played a show, met folks at the label, and began what we all hope will be a very long and happy relationship.

Since then, Avi, Sheridan, Arin, and Rebecca have toured with and made fans of new label-mates Beach House, played the FYF Festival and the Monolith Festival, found unexpected, glowing response and airplay from Steve Lamacq at BBC1, and closer to home from KCRW and KXLU, and have received a whole lot of unsolicited press attention. All before putting out a record.

Because we at Sub Pop are (still…) in the increasingly anachronistic business of putting out records, we plan to change that. And so! On Dec. 8th, 2009 we will be releasing “What’s in It For?” b/w “Jessica” as a 7" vinyl single, recorded by the aforementioned and comprehensively associated Aaron Embry. You can pre-order this single now right here. One or both of these songs will also be found on the debut Avi Buffalo full-length that we are just ridiculously puffed-up about releasing in the spring of 2010.